Before Watchmen: Nite Owl #3Review

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Nite Owl finds romance on the job.

By Jesse Schedeen

It's a bad sign when the title character of a Before Watchmen series is the least compelling character in the book. Unfortunately, while Dan Dreiberg's peculiar psychology might have made him one of the star players of the original series, here he's been routinely overshadowed by the likes of Rorschach and the first Nite Owl, Hollis Mason. For all the storytelling potential this book might have had, J. Michael Straczynski hasn't done enough to realize it.

Straczynski devotes much of issue #3 to a nighttime escapade between Nite Owl and the sexually charged Twilight Lady. I'm all for using this series as a means of exploring the roots of Dreiberg's sexual dysfunction, but Straczynski's treatment is annoyingly silly at times, as if the character had wandered into a retro prequel to The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Between the repeated, lame puns about "coming" and the generally farcical, naive portrayal of Nite Owl, it's difficult to take the issue very seriously. The Nite Owl portion of the story doesn't pick up until the very end during a cryptic conversation between the current and retired Nite Owls. Annoyingly, this material is cut off without satisfying payoff.

Once again, this series is far more interesting on Rorschach's end. Here we see a take on the character set before he had fully embraced his dark side, something that not even Brain Azzarello's series looks to be focusing on. Straczynski also finally connects the dots between the two characters and their respective conflicts. Even so, with this series only lasting four issues, it seems like these pages would be better devoted towards the title character.

The series' presentation takes a hit in this issue thanks to the unfortunate passing of Joe Kubert. Those pages Kubert wasn't able to finish inking are instead handled by Bill Sienkiewicz. There's arguably no artist in the industry more renowned for his bold, striking inks. Unfortunately, the limited timetable and the need to adhere to Kubert's style dilutes Sienkiewicz's work to a degree. His pages stand out only because there a bit more rough and haphazard than Kubert's. This issue still captures the Watchmen aesthetic well, as the previous two have, but some of the finer details are a bit dampened .

Jesse is a writer for IGN Comics and IGN Movies. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following Jesse on Twitter, or on IGN.

Mediocre

Nite Owl has some fun on the job, but Rorschach again steals the show in Before Watchmen: Nite Owl #3.